2003-12-27

OK, so Christmas is over with: I achieved deep spiritual communion with my couch and watched many crappy videos; my catatonia was interrupted by phone calls from well-wishing friends and family often enough to keep me from drifting into a permanent vegetative state. Success all around.

But now, I have a whole week off work, as the Minister’s office is closed for the holidays. A whole week of free time, and no budget to go out of town. I haven’t had a week to sit around at home and do nothing since…junior high, now that I think about it. Given my fierce and irrational love of total inactivity, you’d think I’d be overjoyed at the opportunity to lie around and grow moss, but actually I feel sort of lost. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been starting my days with bursts of productivity – walk dog! Go for a run! Wash dishes! Finish articles! – and then drifting into a sort of confused fugue state somewhere in mid-afternoon, flipping channels until I can’t take any more “Trading Spaces” and “Law and Order” reruns, and going to bed around ten o’clock like an old lady. There is no order in my universe! Seven more days of this and I’ll be shambling to the corner store in my bathrobe and talking to myself. Uh, more often.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies, of course. Yesterday I went to see Dances With Ninjas – sorry, that’s The Last Samurai – because I’d seen everything else that was playing at the theatre. Well, except Paycheck, but yeah, sorry Mr. Affleck – give me a call when you make it off the “new releases” shelf at Blockbuster. It sucked much less than I thought it would. Cheesy and predictable, of course, but less histrionically sentimental than I’d feared. Tom Cruise did a serviceable job of his role, which consisted mostly of looking unwashed and sitting in steely-eyed silence. At least, I think it was supposed to be “steely-eyed silence” – his long pauses were sort of ambiguous, evidently intended to convey brooding intensity, but sometimes seeming more like he’d forgotten his line. Whichever. Swords! Head-chopping! Sexy Japanese men in silly skirts! Two hours of something to do! Thumbs up.